Read Online MacRoscope by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online Page B

laughed.
    Ivo tried to untangle the physical reaction he experienced from the intellectual content of their conversation, afraid of a Freudian slip. “No, I mean it. ‘Schön’ is the only foreign word I know.”
    She studied him with perplexed concern. “Is it a — a mental block? You’re good at some things, but not at—”
    The elevator ride finally ended, and she disengaged her torso from his. They climbed into a cart. Now it was her thigh that distracted him, wedged against his. Could she be unaware of the havoc she wrought along his nerve connections — his synapses? “I guess Brad didn’t tell you about that. I’m no genius. I
am
pretty good at certain types of reasoning, the way some feeble-minded people can do complex mathematical tricks in their heads or play championship chess — but apart from that I’m a pretty ordinary guy with ordinary values. I guess you thought I was like Brad, huh?”
Fat chance!
    She had the grace to blush. “I guess I did, Ivo. I’m sorry. I heard so much about Schön; then you came—”
    “What
did
he tell you about Schön?”
    “That would fill a small manual by itself. How did you come to meet him, Ivo?”
    “Schön? I never did meet him, really.”
    “But—”
    “You know about the projects? The one he—”
    She looked away, and the loose ponytail flung out momentarily to brush his cheek.
Is she a conscious flirt?
No, she was being natural;
he
was the one, reacting. “Yes,” she said, “Brad told me about that too. How Schön was in the — free-love community. Only—”
    “So you see, I did not actually share lodging with him.”
    “Yes, I was aware of that. But why are you the only one who knows where to find him?”
    “I’m not. Brad knows. Other members of the project know, though they never talk about it.”
    This time her flush was frustration, and he felt the angry flexure in the muscle of her leg.
She doesn’t like to be balked.
    “Brad told me you were the only one who could summon him!”
    “It’s an — arrangement we have.”
    “Brad knows where Schön is, but won’t go for him himself? That doesn’t sound like—”
    The journey by rail was over, no tunnel of love. “Brad
can’t
go for him himself. I guess you could call me an intermediary, or maybe a personal secretary. An answering service: that’s closest Schön simply won’t come out for anyone unless I handle it. He doesn’t involve himself with anything that isn’t sufficiently challenging.”
    “An alien destroyer that has our whole exploratory thrust stymied — isn’t that enough?”
    So she knew what Brad had told him. “I’m not sure. Schön is a genius, you see.”
    “So Brad has informed me, many times. An IQ that can’t be measured, and completely amoral. But surely
this
is cause!”
    “That’s what I’m here to decide.”
    They arrived at the common room: a large compartment of almost standard Earth-gravity, with easy chairs and several games tables. Ivo wondered what billiards or table-tennis would be like in partial gravity. Beside the entrance were several hanging frameworks: games ladders with removable panels. On each panel was a printed name.
    “Who’s Blank?” he asked, reading the top entry of the first.
    “That’s a real name,” she said. “Fred Blank, one of the maintenance men. He’s the table-tennis champion. I don’t really think they should — I mean, this room is for the scientists, the PhD’s. To relax in.”
    “The maintenance men aren’t supposed to relax?”
    She looked a little flustered. “There’s Fred now, reading that magazine.”
    It was a Negro in overalls and unkempt hair. Beside him sat a Caucasian scientist, portly and cheerful. Both looked hot; evidently they had just finished playing a game. It seemed to Ivo that Afra was the only one disturbed, and that told him something about both her and the other personnel of this station. The scientists respected skill wherever they found it; Afra had other definitions.